26\u00a0 bar rises 29.93\u00a0 5mph\u00a0 NNW windchill23<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent of the Snow Moon<\/p>\n
The angle of the sun has changed; the days look potent, ready to burst open and let plant life smash through winter.\u00a0 Even the snow today has a futile, last gasp appearance.\u00a0 It is not the snow fury of midwinter when the drifts pile up and\u00a0driving snow blinds motorists,\u00a0making the home a cozy refuge.\u00a0 Yes, temperatures will plunge the next couple of days, but we know this is just the Hawthorne Giant reluctant to let go his grip on the land.\u00a0 The Oak King has already seized the season, opening the eyelid of nature wider and wider until one day soon the snow will melt and the ground begin to thaw.\u00a0 Then, all hail breaks loose.<\/p>\n
This drama, the back and forth of seasonal change, is not felt in the tropics.\u00a0 I remember the struggle my brother Mark had explaining snow to his classes of Thai students learning English.\u00a0 How to grasp cold and frozen water falling from the sky when all you know is wet seasons and dry?\u00a0 As a child of this land between the Rockies and the Appalachians, the vast Midwest, and as an adopted son of the northern reaches of it, the seasons long ago seeped into my bones.\u00a0 The sun’s countenance changes and I know it; I know it in the animal part of my brain that tells me when it’s time to migrate toward the growing season or to put up stores for a coming winter.\u00a0 The subtle variations between late season snow and the early spitting of snows in November have deep meaning for me.\u00a0 We are, all of us, practitioners of meteoromancy, attempting to tell our futures\u00a0through cloud cover, length of day and temperature.<\/p>\n
I would have it no other way.\u00a0 Visiting the tropics is\u00a0 wonderful, a chance to see another life way, another adaptation to the planet’s many faces, but to live there, to wipe out lifelong learning about spring and its puddles or summer and its heat, does not appeal to me.\u00a0 This has been and will be my home.\u00a0 As I said the other day, I am kama’aina of the heartland, a child of the Upper Midwest on the North American continent and this is where I belong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
26\u00a0 bar rises 29.93\u00a0 5mph\u00a0 NNW windchill23 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent of the Snow Moon The angle of the sun has changed; the days look potent, ready to burst open and let plant life smash through winter.\u00a0 Even the snow today has a futile, last gasp appearance.\u00a0 It is not the snow fury of midwinter when … Continue reading The Days Look Potent<\/span>